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The Witness
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,147 CMod ✭✭✭✭
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Having fluked the solution to the first 'red hexagon' puzzle, I spent ages trying to figure out the logic behind it. Managed to convince myself it had something to do with the way the wires connected to each panel, and managed to make up some insane leaps of logic to 'guess' the second one. Got that one after some mind-melting trial & error, and then realised the rule made no sense at all for third one (obviously didn't make any sense for the first two either :pac:)
Obviously the actual rule turned out to be far, far simpler
Really clever set of puzzles. Thought the greenhouse ones were inspired too. 0 -
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This guy covers how I feel about the lack of narrative, which extends to the lifelessness of the Island, how this game is more like doing a leisurely crossword than an actual game and the trial and error nature of the tutorials that failed me on occasion.
Although I do enjoy the puzzle more than him and it does pain me to see him give a more brute force approach to some of the puzzles.
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Played a good bit of this tonight and I'm not feeling it. The puzzles so far might be clever but really there's not a whole lot here that couldn't be done in a puzzle book. I also feel the whole line puzzle thing is totally at odds with the island exploration. They both feel totally disjointed even when the environment plays a part in some of the puzzles. It's unlike something like Braid or Portal where the central puzzle mechanics are intrinsically entwined in the game and story.
It does remind me a hell of a lot like Myst, the original Mac user pretentious game but Myst to me was a whole lot more engaging. Don't get me started on the pretentious twaddle in the audio logs either.
It's just made me want to go and play something where I shoot things and unfortunately I beat The Old Blood last week. As for the puzzles, so far I'm not enjoying them as much as even a simple Sudoku or Picross, I'm just not feeling as rewarded in working out the logic.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,147 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 27859
Retr0gamer wrote: »The puzzles so far might be clever but really there's not a whole lot here that couldn't be done in a puzzle book.
That's inaccurate. There's a substantial amount of puzzles here that rely on the fact that you're in a 3D space, and able to approach them from varying perspectives. For a game whose main gameplay input is 2D it's a remarkably three dimensional game, and there are several key mechanics that simply could not be replicated on paper.I also feel the whole line puzzle thing is totally at odds with the island exploration. They both feel totally disjointed even when the environment plays a part in some of the puzzles.
Again, I'd disagree near completely here. The puzzles and world constantly inform and interact with each other - no detail is careless or ill-considered. Whether that's puzzle panels making substantial, important changes to the environment, or the world informing the puzzles, the two deceptively disparate elements are constantly interacting. If I'm being honest, it has been a while since I've played a game where every single detail feels so totally precise and everything so carefully intertwined. It's very Dark Souls like in that sense.It's unlike something like Braid or Portal where the central puzzle mechanics are intrinsically entwined in the game and story.
Here's the thing: I'd say everything in The Witness is far more intrinsically entwined than Braid every was. Trying to marry Braid's themes with its gameplay mechanics works on a broad level, but is far less obvious on a moment to moment basis. The Witness is much more coherently designed, the overarching themes, story snippets and gameplay all feel like they've been carefully conceived to operate in harmony.
Touching on what partyjungle was saying about the emptiness of the world, I think that sense of quiet and isolation is utterly essential to what Blow is communicating here. John Teti articulated this best in his IMO dead-on review:AV Club wrote:A uniting theme of the recordings is epiphany—a moment when your consciousness expands to accommodate some new, essential truth. These aural tone-setters are an elegant accent to the game, which is an epiphanic symphony of its own, producing a crescendo of little miracles in your brain if you let it.
The title has a poignant connotation: You are the sole witness to your flashes of new understanding, and only you perceive the particular alchemy of hard work and happenstance that produced them. There’s a beauty in the loneliness there, which The Witness accentuates with its more literal solitude... When you are struck by an elegant solution in the game, you not only get the thrill of your achievement, but you can also sense a faint echo of the larger epiphanies that have driven humanity forward.
Dismiss it as 'pretentious' (that shallowest, most useless of criticisms), but that's something I constantly see reflected in The Witness. It's a game about knowledge and progress - how we come to understand the world through observation and creation alike. You travel through shrines, greenhouses, windmills, factories, orchards - all exploring the ways people look at the world and apply the knowledge they've gained or are looking for. That feeds into how the game asks you to interact with it. It's fitting, then, that there's the unobtrusive, sparse audio logs reflect on historical examples of that.
The beautiful but eerily quiet world. The scattered audio logs. The puzzles themselves. They all come together to create what is one of the most artful, brilliantly authored games I've ever played.
It ain't for everyone, I fully accept that. But I think you know yourself Retr0 you will find no shortage of games to satisfy your self-acknowledged bloodlust
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johnny_ultimate wrote: »It ain't for everyone, I fully accept that. But I think you know yourself Retr0 you will find no shortage of games to satisfy your self-acknowledged bloodlust
It's not that I would prefer some dumb shooting action I was just crazing it as an antidote to this game. I just found it kind of exhausting which is strange for a game with such a sedate pace. It's just so unrewarding. Every time you complete a puzzle your reward is yet more puzzles and at one point I said out loud 'ffs'. I'm just not enjoying the puzzles as much as I would in other puzzle games and still feel a massive disconnect between the puzzle aspect and the actual island. I finished a big section of colour based puzzles last night (the Greenhouse section I believe) and even the environmental stuff didn't make me feel like these puzzles really needed mechanics that could only be achieved in a videogame. I hope that isn't the extent of how clever the puzzles get. I'll keep at it but I'm just finding it so unrewarding.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,147 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 27859
Deleted User wrote: »
The literal narrative is absolutely ****e imo. Did you watch foreign video of the guy trying to carry a candle across a ruined building? That is a hyperbolic example of what I think of the attempts of narrative in this game (voice clips, videos). It was high brow tripe dropped on you for no apparent reason. I have no qualms admitting that was above me, or below me, or whatever its supposed to be, as it made zero sense to me. I'm not overly surprised since the narrative in Braid was poor too.
Yep, that's a clip from Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalgia (one of the few films of his I haven't seen in full, but am aware of the scene since it's pretty iconic). And it was one of the moments that made me go 'Jonathan Blow, you magnificent bastard' :pac:
On a basic level, I think that clip is a beautiful analogy for what the game is trying to achieve. It's about persistence, concentrating on your goal until you reach it. The actual moment of insight may be relatively minor, all things considered: whether that's moving a candle across a square, or solving a line puzzle. But there's that sense of relief, insight or (ahem) epiphany too, and that's something Blow hopes the player feels dozens of times throughout the game.
On a broader level, I believe quoting Tarkovsky is an illuminating insight into what the game is trying to achieve aesthetically. The director is known for his incredibly long takes, narratives that require persistence and patience to work through. Sometimes the takes have some sort of dramatic carthasis, sometimes they don't. But he has an immense commitment to digging into the deeper meaning of images and using the tools of cinema in a unique and provocative way.
That's kind of how I feel about The Witness too. It explores a mechanic and environment at great length, and over the running time starts asking you to reflect on the kind of things it wants you to. The video clips look at a lot of them: a dialogue between science and art, for example, or the way different people look at and interpret the world. It's rare I'd compare a game to a Tarkovsky film, but I'm happy in this case I can - an incredibly formally robust, thematically intriguing piece of work that shows an absolute, almost obsessive commitment to what it is trying to explore. It helps that it's a pretty neat puzzle game to boot 0 -
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,147 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 27859
AndA Certain Challengeis done. Still have most ofthe Cave puzzlesto do, anddozens of environmental puzzlesto track down, but after 50 hours of play I'm more or less 'done'.
Most of what I have to say I've said earlier here, but really cannot remember any game that has just sunk its teeth in so well. There's certainly the compulsive nature of the puzzles themselves, but this to me is just a beautiful pinnacle of game design. The level of control and artistry employed in the design of the gameplay and world is like little I've experienced before. 'Control' is the word I'd use - everything feels so expertly honed and considered, with so little wastage. It's so wonderfully dense with secrets and meaning and ideas that to me it feels much bigger than the ostensibly 'big' open world games. The utmost care has been taken in every little detail, from the architecture of individual buildings to the overall visual style, that over around 50 hours I was still endlessly impressed by what it had to offer. It's so respectful of the player's time and commitment - I genuinely can't remember another a game that kept surprising and impressing me duringand after the end credits:pac:
I absolutely see how it has left people cold and unimpressed, but I for one definitely was hooked from the beginning and oddly enough found it a very warm and welcoming world to spend time in. It, I think, will continue to divide, confound and amaze for some time yet as more people play it. Screw the risk of hyperbole, though: without a shadow of a doubt, The Witness is my favourite game in I couldn't tell you how long - this is the **** I play games for.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,147 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 27859
Great, pretty comprehensive (given the depths of the game, there's still lots unexplored :pac:) conversation with Blow from the Giant Bomb guys. For his reputation for pretentiousness, I always think in video interviews (compared to print interviews, where he seems more elusive) he comes across as nicely down-to-earth, able to articulate his views eruditely and confidently but in a very accessible, easily digestible way. So this is a fascinating breakdown of the design philosophy of the game. Plus, wonderful to see him tackle The Challenge and get stuck with the same brain farts
Just a warning: Do not watch the video until you feel you have pretty comprehensively or confidently finished up with the game.
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